Stephen Dunn is the author of 18 poetry collections and received the Pulitzer Prize for Different Hours (2001). Here in a sort of prelude poem titled "A Card from Me to Me," the poet pats himself on the back for making it 75 years and gives thanks for "the strangeness, the immensity, of what I have and have had and every small thing that against the odds continues to be."
In the complicated world of relationships, Dunn ponders the meaning of honesty ("Propositions"), the flaws in certainty ("Call Them All In"), the courage to believe that "sometimes the accidental / is the beginning of possibility" ("Emergings"), trying to cope with the problem "that desire / had no season," ("The Problem"), and making the best of "an ever-greying sky" ("Men Falling").
We admire Dunn's fortitude when he tackles the difference between awe and ecstasy ("Even the Awful") or when he tries in "An Evolution of Prayer" to "love people as I love animals." Best of all is the creativity, empathy, and open-mindedness the poet reveals in "If It's True" (read the entire poem in the excerpt); he muses over the memories of objects regarding the ways in which they are admired or diminished by human beings.
